We love the Internet. Except when we hate it. Every week, Jordan Valinksy bottles the angst of his Millennial generation and finds something to despise about the Web.
As we all learned through Drew Barrymore’s cute little texting adventures in the 2009 classic film He’s Just Not That Into You, men simply don’t know how to communicate in relationships.
Thank God for the frat pack founded website, HeTexted, here to rescue us. Now you can finally interpret what men actually mean but are too scared to explicitly text or email because communicating clearly with another human being is beyond our manly powers. This holy grail of clarification on innuendoes everywhere promises to solve countless angsty and self-indulgent dilemmas. Even Anderson Cooper is excited about it.
“Got a text from that guy and don’t know what it means?” reads the site’s punchline, splashed onto an eggplant-colored, decidedly unmanly background. Was the tiled wallpaper of Hooters logos, guns, and Budweiser labels too busy?
The site encourages users to submit screenshots of texts so readers can vote on whether “HE’S INTO YOU” or “HE’S NOT INTO YOU.” Why, was “THAT’S A DEAL BREAKER, LADIES!” trademarked?
There is also an useless non-option to select, “VERDICT IS STILL OUT”—so even the ambivalent can have an opinion, when apparently the sender does not. If your text garners the most “verdict is still out” options, then no one knows anything and you should just give up on life. Or better yet, act like an adult and ask him what he means instead of relying on strangers to analyze a context-free conversation. Whatever!
But wait, there are more options for the dazed and confused text recipients. If your results from the crowd’s mindshare aren’t to your liking, you can privately “ASK A BRO,” which offers up three dejected former fraternity presidents who probably graduated from @MensHumor University as text interpreters extraordinaire.
The dudimanti are as follows: Mason (a.k.a. “Dude Whisperer”), Ben (“kind of a douchebag,” he publicly admits, so LADIESSSS), and Tim, who wears a button-up shirt without buttons. If they need a fourth, they should extend an invitation to walking GNC model Paul Ryan. He has a certain je ne sais quoi with the ladies.
A scroll down the page reveals a lot of heartbroken, confused biddies who want to know if their man is in it or just “In it to hit it.” Reading these missives in a Samantha Jones voice makes this site so much more fun to read.
Much to the disappointment of the true biddies, however, a lot of the messages are so vapid I can only guess that they have been submitted by trolls looking to skew HeTexted’s scientifically rigorous voting system. Take this text to “alice.walla,” who writes that a guy thanked her for “last night” but went on to say he had to leave early. “We hooked up, he left. Is he into me?” she sadly asks. More than 900 people voted “He’s Not into You.” What is sad is that alice.walla needed more than 900 votes to realize this.
Then there are the pitifully naive texts, such as this alleged one from “SexyB” (uh, sure) who forgot to download the latest software update to her gaydar.
She met the mystery man in question, Ray, at a poetry meeting. Ray complimented her scarf (warning #1). Ray and SexyB went shopping the next day (warning #2). SexyB claimed things were “going great” (probably because he found some a great bargains at the J.Crew outlet store, love) and was confused as to why Ray didn’t come over when she told him her totally hot brother, Justin, wouldn’t be home. This kinda sounds like something that would happen to Liz Lemon, right?
These texts and the people in them are the worst. While blinding attractiveness can blurry a person’s rationality even more than beer goggles, there is no good reason to resort to asking for help from Mason, Ben, Tim, or Paul Ryan, for that matter.
Biddies of the digital era, save yourself from public embarrassment and harassment from jerks like me. If you have to consider submitting your iPhone screenshots to HeTexted, I’m pretty sure he’s just not that into you.
Photo via HeTexted